Beyond Negative Rights: Living Without Certainty, Social Change and the Possibility of Postmodern Ethics

Abstract

Of all the aspects of theories that contain “postmodern sensibilities,” none seems to engender as much unease and resistance in its critics as the presumed celebration of moral deficit and the supposed debunking of ethical universalism. The charge of nihilism is usually traced back to a number of thinkers broadly associated with postmodern or poststructural theory. Nietzsche and his attempt to go “beyond good and evil,” as well as Foucault's disdain for the centered epistemological subject, are frequently cited as examples of postmodern theory's inability to grapple with the ubiquity of ethical issues, concerns for responsibility and the necessity of making moral valuations. While concerns for ethics do not appear, at first glance, as central issues, theory that is broadly associated with postmodernism is, I contend, often deeply aware of issues surrounding ethics and morality.

Citation

Neir Woodward, A. (2005), "Beyond Negative Rights: Living Without Certainty, Social Change and the Possibility of Postmodern Ethics", Lehmann, J.M. (Ed.) Social Theory as Politics in Knowledge (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, Vol. 23), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 337-356. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0278-1204(05)23007-4